Castello had sent Lambert, Molina, and Sebag, along with a dozen other uniformed officers, to help out their colleagues in Customs. Ménard and Llach had remained at headquarters to question Barrère. Ménard, because he was not comfortable with this kind of raid; Llach because he was too well known in the neighborhood to take part in a surprise operation.
They were waiting for the signal from Captain Marceau of French Customs. They arrived in the area at 7:00 A.M. A first van had arrived at about eight o’clock. The warehouse door had slid open just far enough to let the van enter. Then it had been immediately closed. A second van arrived shortly afterward. Neither of them had come out again. They estimated that there were five or six people inside. They’d taken up their positions surrounding the warehouse at 8:20.
In his headphone, Sebag heard Marceau’s low voice.
“We’re ready, we have them surrounded, let’s go.”
Marceau had hardly finished speaking when Sebag saw far away on the highway interchange two cars and a dark blue van with rotating lights flashing on their roofs. They roared up to the parking lot, their sirens blaring. Eight customs men spurted out of the vehicles. Two of them placed themselves on either side of the big metal door to the warehouse; the others, holding their rifles to their shoulders, took up positions behind the cars. They pounded on the door while the usual orders were barked out. The operation might seem excessive for the arrest of a handful of amateur smugglers. But in every raid, you had to be ready for trouble: you could never tell when one of the criminals might be a hothead prepared to fire on a cop to avoid going to prison.
The wait seemed to Sebag interminable. Gripping the handle of his revolver, his right hand was getting sweaty. His fingers were all white. He loosened his grip. The metal walls of the warehouse revealed nothing about the hesitations and probable discussions among the smugglers.
The door slowly slid open. Silently. Just as a few men started to come out with their hands in the air, a side door suddenly opened. Right in front of Lambert. A young man rushed out, a revolver in his hand. Stunned by the presence of the police, he froze. Only his haggard eyes moved, jumping from one cop to another without stopping on any of them. He gripped his gun more tightly. Sebag saw Lambert, who was also scared, straighten his arm slightly to aim better. Somebody had to speak. Right away. Make contact.
“Let’s calm down, people, let’s calm down,” he said, spreading his arms wide, his palms forward.
The young man’s eyes settled on him. Beads of sweat were forming on his forehead. His hand was still gripping the revolver, but he wasn’t aiming it at anyone.
“There’s nothing you can do, there are too many of us. Don’t make it worse for yourself.”
He raised the barrel of the revolver a little, but a slight flutter in his eyes betrayed his hesitation. He’d understood the situation. Sebag sensed that he had to be given time to come to an agreement with his pride. He had to maintain contact.
“There are about fifty cops here, and the whole area is surrounded. You know it isn’t worth it. You have no chance.”
Without taking his eyes off Sebag, the young man slowly lowered his gun.
“Now drop it on the ground, and then slowly put your arms behind your back and turn around. Slowly, still very slowly.”
The boy waited a few more seconds for appearance’s sake. Sebag continued to talk as calmly as possible. The words didn’t matter, the tone was the most important thing. Calm and firm. Cops should do internships with circus lion-tamers, he thought. Finally the young man did what he was told. He crouched down to drop his gun. Got back up. Turned around. Sebag put away his revolver while Lambert held a gun on the criminal. He took his pair of handcuffs from the back pocket of his pants and put them on the young man. Without his gun and the extreme tension that had filled him during the last few seconds, he looked like what he really was: a boy of eighteen at most. Just a few years older than Léo.
Lambert led the boy away and made him get into the Customs van. Sebag took a deep breath. He suddenly felt terribly thirsty.
He went into the warehouse. A bluish light fell from the skylights. He counted five men sitting handcuffed in front of a mountain of boxes. He went up to Captain Marceau, who was talking to the prefecture on the phone. He waited until Marceau had finished his conversation.
“Well?”
The leader of the Customs men looked half-satisfied.
“The catch could have been better,” he said, “but it’s not so bad. A few weapons confiscated, six people arrested, including the ringleaders, I think. A stroke of luck. So far as the merchandise is concerned, we’re still working on a preliminary estimate.”
Two Customs men in uniform were in fact moving around the pile of boxes, counting them.
“Would you say you made a forcible arrest?” Captain Marceau asked Sebag.
“Forcible seems to me an exaggeration . . . Let’s say it was tense.”
“A perp came out with a gun in his hand, I’m told?”
“True, but he didn’t really threaten us.”
Sebag guessed where his interlocutor was trying to get him to go. Psychologically, the confiscation of weapons was more important than the quantity of cigarettes seized. It would allow them to show the public that cigarette smuggling was no longer harmless and that it led directly to major crime. The arrest of the boy was thus likely to be highlighted. Sebag knew that some people at the prefecture or the ministry would go so far as to regret—only sotto voce, of course—that there hadn’t been an exchange of gunfire. Ah! If a cop could have been wounded in this operation . . . Sebag no longer nourished any illusions regarding the limits of his lofty, distant superiors’ cynicism. But maybe that was due only to the bad mood that had settled over his tired mind. In any case, he’d do everything he could to ensure that the boy wasn’t made to seem more dangerous than he was.
Superintendent Castello, who had followed the whole operation by radio from his office, appeared in the warehouse a few minutes after the operation. He greeted Marceau and then Sebag. He wore a broad smile.
“Perfect, gentlemen. This was carried out in high style, I think.”
One of the two Customs men who were counting the boxes came up to Captain Marceau.
“We’ve counted 292 boxes, that makes almost three thousand cartons in all.”
“Market value?”
The Customs man did the calculation in his notebook and gave his verdict:
“At thirty euros a carton—the average retail price—that comes to a total of 87,600 euros.”
“Not bad,” the superintendent commented soberly.
“It’s not equivalent to a seizure of drugs in Le Perthus,” the Captain said. “But for cigarette smuggling, it’s not bad, in fact. We’ll round it off to a hundred thousand euros for the newspapers and that will be fine.”
Castello gave a crude horse-dealer’s wink to the head of the Customs men.
“I’ll leave you two of my men, but if you no longer need the others . . . We’re planning to make raids on bars in Perpignan. We’ve already located three of them, but the operation will be more extensive.”
Marceau approved.
“So, in the end the minister is not coming?” Castello asked.
“He’s busy elsewhere, but the prefect will be here around eleven—I’ve just talked to the head of his cabinet. The reporters will be called in for an improvised press conference. The television crews will be allowed to film it.”
It was the superintendent‘s turn to approve.
“I see the public relations plan is under way.”
“It’s part of the job,” Marceau confirmed.
Castello turned to Sebag.
“You’ll stay here with Lambert. Molina will join Llach in Perpignan; they’ll direct the operations. I’m going back to headquarters. Ménard must be grilling Barrère.”
&n
bsp; Sebag and Lambert recorded the identities of the smugglers and began the preliminary interrogations. Two of the criminals—apparently the ringleaders—were, to use the traditional formula, known to the police for the crimes of procuring and dealing drugs. After doing time in prison, they had thought they could get away from it all by selling cigarettes. They’d made the first runs in their own car. A dozen cartons on each trip, that was almost legal. Then they‘d recruited a handful of buddies who were out of work and their little business grew larger.
Three of their accomplices had been unemployed for four years. They hadn’t thought they were doing anything wrong. They made trips from time to time. Brought home a little money. The first in a long time. It wasn’t much at first, but it was already a lot for them. They got more and more involved and hadn’t been able to quit when they should have. A single round-trip to Spain brought in more than a hard day’s work in Roussillon’s vineyards or orchards.
The boy had already appeared before the juvenile court judge. The theft of a scooter, burglary. He’d barely avoided going to prison, and this time he wasn’t going to get off again. He’d turned eighteen two months before, and had been arrested with a gun in his hand. He was the one who would get the heaviest sentence.
“He didn’t point his gun at you, did he?” Sebag asked Lambert.
“No. I thought he was going to but he stopped when you spoke to him.”
“So we agree. You won’t change your version of the facts even if you’re asked to?”
“Uh . . . no. But why would anyone ask me to do that?”
“Who knows,” Sebag said evasively.
A few years earlier, he would have found ways to make the reports less damning. He would have avoided mentioning the boy’s reluctance to surrender, which would have gotten him a more lenient sentence in court. But would the kid even know how to take advantage of that? His record hardly left room for any illusions about that. Once he was back on the street, he’d start all over again. And maybe next time he’d raise his hand and fire. Sebag didn’t want to take that risk. He couldn’t do anything more for the boy.
They left the warehouse just before the prefect and the media arrived. They’d all gotten up early that morning. It was time for lunch. Their stomachs noisily demanded their reward.
They joined Jacques in a little restaurant in the Saint Charles Market. Gilles ordered fish a la plancha with ratatouille. Molina told them about the police raids in the Perpignan bars. They’d raided about a dozen bars and had found contraband cigarettes only in the three they’d already targeted.
That afternoon, everyone gathered in the meeting room. It was unbearably hot, but they’d have to bear it anyway, because the air conditioner had resisted all Lambert’s, Molina’s, and Llach’s attempts to make it work.
After devoting a few minutes to the morning’s operation, they moved on to Ingrid Raven’s case.
Lopez’s computer had been hacked by specialists from a computer shop who’d been brought in by Castello. It had taken them only a few minutes, the password being simply Syljenny, a condensed version of the first names of his wife and daughter. Lopez used his computer mainly to play video games, watch DVDs, and surf the Net. He often visited porno sites but limited himself to free ones. Lefèvre, who had undertaken to explore Lopez’s account, had found nothing noteworthy other than an Excel file containing initials, dates, and a few figures. He handed around a few copies.
“We’ll come back to this after Inspector Ménard’s presentation,” he explained.
Ménard was eager to report his interrogation of Barrère. He seemed satisfied with himself, which was a good sign. Barrère had begun the interview by reprimanding the policemen. He was furious to have been hauled in that way and laid out his connections the way one puts on a bullet-proof vest: the prosecutor, elected officials, the chamber of commerce, etc. Ménard had immediately countered. He’d drawn a dark picture—prostitution, kidnapping, perhaps murder. He’d made Barrère see that his famous connections wouldn’t hold up for long under the weight of the facts about which he was being questioned today—as a witness and only as a witness. Barrère had quickly understood. He’d become meek as a lamb and told them everything he knew.
He admitted having occasionally organized rather unusual parties for businesses that wanted to show certain important customers a good time. It was essentially in the context of these parties that he hired Lopez to serve as a driver and a “guide.” It was a good deal, because he paid Lopez in cash and won back all or part of the money when they played billiards. Lopez spent what remained to him on call-girls, because he had a hard time remaining passive during these “lively” parties. Barrère denied knowing anything about Lopez’s trafficking in Viagra.
One Friday, the cab driver had called him because he needed money to pay a hotel bill for a young woman he’d met a few days earlier at a vernissage. The hotel was expensive, and Barrère didn’t have enough cash on him, so he paid the first two nights in advance with his firm’s checkbook, thinking that he could absorb the bill into his general operating expenses. Lopez had confided in him that he intended to get the beautiful Vanessa to take part in some sex parties in Perpignan.
Barrère had seen Lopez and the young woman—he didn’t know what her real name was—again on Tuesday evening. Lopez had paid back in cash the five hundred euros that Barrère had advanced him for the hotel, explaining that he’d found Ingrid’s first customer. He’d spoken openly in front of the young woman. Barrère had heard nothing further from him since that evening. And he had no idea who the customer in question was.
“What was your impression of Barrère this morning?” the superintendent asked.
“I think this time he told us everything. He said that when we first told him about Lopez’s disappearance he thought he’d run off with a woman. So his sole objective was to keep us from discovering his firm’s dubious practices, and since most of the information he could have given us about Ingrid Raven and Lopez threatened to lead us to examine his activities, in each case he’d told us as little as possible.
“Do you think Barrère had something to do with Ingrid’s disappearance?” Castello asked Ménard.
“No, not directly, anyway.”
Lefèvre confirmed Ménard’s impression. Then he forked out a compliment regarding the way the interrogation had been conducted. That pleased Ménard, but his colleagues appreciated it less. Not because they were jealous but because it didn’t seem right for a young greenhorn to allow himself to comment on their work.
“With your permission,” Lefèvre continued, “we’ll now return to the table that was found on Lopez’s computer and that I distributed to you a little while ago. We think it is a kind of summary, coded account book for Lopez’s petty trafficking. I say summary because Lopez wrote down only the entries, that is, the amounts received or due. Across from the amounts, there are initials corresponding to his cab customers. You’ll note that the letters “GB” often come up. They refer, of course, to Gérard Barrère. This morning he confirmed that the amounts recorded generally corresponded to cash payments he’d made to Lopez.
The inspectors silently examined the table.
“I’d like to draw your attention particularly to the very last line. Across from the letters “BW,” there is the sum of three thousand euros. If from that sum we subtract five hundred euros to repay the sum Barrère advanced to pay for the first two nights in the hotel, and then five hundred more to pay for the following two nights, we have two thousand euros—and that is, I remind you, the amount found in Lopez’s taxi.”
Lefèvre gave the policemen time to follow his reasoning. The inspectors’ eyes moved from one line to another on the table. They all finally arrived at the notorious initials.
“So without going too far we can say that these three thousand euros constitute the payment made by the customer that Lopez found for Ingrid. BW is probably the last to
have seen the couple. Thus at this point he is our main suspect.”
Sebag nodded. The reasoning seemed to him simple and hence pertinent. The investigation had just made real progress. Maybe Claire had been right the other night when she called him an eternal pessimist.
However, they still had to find this mysterious BW.
The house was empty and silent.
Séverine had left while Sebag was playing cowboy. For her part, Claire had gone out with some female friends. At least that’s what she’d said.
He found himself all alone.
On leaving headquarters, he’d gone running. He’d gotten on a bike path and followed it for the first two or three miles, doing wind sprints. Then on the way back he’d run at a steadier pace. Seven miles an hour. Running had done his mind good but exhausted his body. Not enough sleep the last few nights.
The first thing he did when he got home was take a shower. Cold water on full blast. His body stiffened under the spray and then gradually relaxed. He gave the water time to get rid of the heat accumulated under his skin. When he turned off the faucet, it was immediately silent again. A heavy silence. He put on a pair of shorts and a simple tank top.
He wandered through the soulless house. He thought he liked it, felt good in it, but it needed to resound with noise and life. Silent, he found it sinister. Glacial, despite the heat. He gazed at the pool through the living room window. The water was calm, pure, and blue. Tempting. But he didn’t feel like going for a swim. There was no one to splash water on him.
He ran his eyes over the bookcase. It had been a long time since he’d sat down with a good book. He could read in the study. Or in the bedroom, on the terrace, in the living room. He had only too many choices. No need to get away from the television set, from the computer, Séverine’s radio or Léo’s stereo. His new freedom made him feel dizzy.
Summertime All the Cats Are Bored Page 12